Que Sera Sera
by Lorata
Summary: Three people who knew Madeline watch Lyme's Reaping: her mother, her father, and the teacher who helped her find her dream. Only one makes the connection.


Annie holds tight to Kate's hand, her palm and fingers slippery with sweat. Her head comes up level with Kate's hip, and for a second Kate pries her hand loose to fix the bow in Annie's blonde hair, wilting in the heat. Annie looks up at her, her eyes big and blue and trusting, and under the force of that open, vulnerable stare, Kate forgets how to breathe like she always does.

Kate never wanted to be a mother and certainly never felt like one, not for all the years she'd struggled. She'd always thought motherhood was something that happened, this thing that women bore because someone forced it on them; never a choice, and never an identity, more like a pair of shackles that had to be endured because there was no other option. Annie changed all that from the very first day Kate gazed at her wrinkled, ruddy face and felt her husband's hand warm on her shoulder.

Jake stands by her now, his arm solid around her waist, present but not possessive. His hand sits at her hip, the fingers flat against her dress, not digging in, not reminding her of her place, of his ownership. Not like Hank. Nothing like Hank at all, Hank with his hard hands and his hard face and the hard twist of his lip that he'd passed down to their daughter.

"Who do you think will be Reaped this year, Mama?" Annie asks. This morning she let Kate dress her in a pretty blue gown with a lace collar and she never once complained, never hissed and stomped and tugged at it like it strangled her. "Do you think she'll be pretty like last year?"

"They're always pretty, buttercup," Jake says in a low voice. They're not supposed to talk during the ceremony but it hasn't started yet, and the rules are less strict if you're not at the central Reaping point anyway. "Though not as pretty as you."

He means it as a compliment, of course he does, but Kate freezes. Annie sucks in a breath at her side, and she clings even tighter to Kate's hand. "But if they want girls who are pretty, what if they want me when I'm old enough? I don't want to go to the Games!"

"Hush," Kate says, a hair away from frantic. She glances around for Peacekeepers, but they're all at the edges of the crowd, looking for disturbances. No one is listening for a little girl's whisper below the murmur of the grownups, even if she is speaking treason. "They won't take you, baby. I promise. That's what the Centre is for."

Annie will be six this fall, and the Centre will not take this one. They won't get their hooks in this time, won't turn a good little girl into a monster. There are enough children who are monsters already, enough girls with murder in their veins, to take her place. They don't need this one. Not this time.

Right from the beginning, before she was old enough to understand, Kate showed Annie the Games, let her scream for weeks with nightmares. Every night Kate held her and kissed her hair and told her no, no, not for you baby girl, never you. Jake disapproved and said so, his voice tight and quiet while Annie finally slept, tears on her cheeks. Kate and Jake don't fight much but they did over this, and Kate nearly choked on the terror but he never once laid a hand on her, never moved into her space to remind her that he could even if he didn't. He also listened, and after Kate reminded him what happened the first time, after Annie stopped crying in the daytime and went back to playing with her dolls, he agreed that maybe it was for the best.

This school year the Centre will send its recruits, and Kate would sit through a thousand nightmares and never sleep a full night again if it means Annie runs the other way when she sees them.

The Capitol staffers finish moving the screens into place in lieu of the stage, and the familiar shiver starts in Kate's spine. Jake's best friend Darren and his wife Becca had to go to the district central Justice Building this year because their Benjamin got drawn in the pre-reaping. He's only thirteen, and his two years at the Centre from the age of seven are long gone now, so there's no way he's going in, but it's still a jolt.

Kate still doesn't like to think about the girls. She's too close to it, to the anger and the violence that goes into making this perfect, pretty tributes. They're always pretty, just like Jake said. Sometimes, before she gets a grip on herself and shuts it down, Kate wonders what the Centre would've done with her stubborn, intractable first daughter once they got her and it was too late to give her back. That girl screamed and stomped and swore over something as simple as hair ribbons; she'd never make it through the rounds of primping that the tributes had to go through.

Or maybe not. Maybe they convinced her to put up with wearing a dress and standing like a lady if she got to kill someone later.

Kate left her daughter, seven years ago, when she packed her things and slammed the door of that prison-house behind her. Kate had promised to bring her but they both knew she hadn't meant it - no mother would take her own daughter away from a house that fed and clothed her for an uncertain life on the streets. Besides, when was Kate supposed to get away when the girl and Hank were always home at the same time of day, no time to slip away? She'd left when the girl had only two years left before the Centre took her for good, and she'd already learned to fight and yearn for the taste of blood.

She wouldn't have wanted to come with Kate anyway, not really. Kate knew early on that her own daughter hated and despised her; running away together would not have fixed that, and would likely have made it worse. Leaving alone had been one of the hardest things Kate ever did, but it was the right thing, she knew it. The Centre takes care of its own, and the children who don't grow up to be murderers could turn into Peacekeepers, trainers, doctors. It's a thought she tried not to dwell on during the rare times they took their daughter to the hospital, that the nice man setting the break in her arm might have once watched another die at his own hand.

Kate takes that thought and shoves it back in the closet of her mind before it can show on her face. Beside her, Jake must have felt her tense, because he pulls her closer and presses a kiss to her hair. "Easy, baby, I've got you," he says. He's solid and reassuring, and Kate breathes in the strength of him and lets him ground her.

She told him, a year after he first asked her out, that she never wanted children again, not after what happened the first time. Kate had steeled herself for a fight, for Jake to demand his right to kids of his own, that it didn't matter what happened in the past because they'd started a new life now. Instead he'd held her face in his hands, kissed her and said of course not, he'd never force anything like that on her.

Now Kate leans her head against Jake's shoulder and keeps her hold on Annie's hand. Funny, the sort of things a person chooses when they're actually given the choice to make.

The screens flicker to life, showing the first image of the Justice Building and a sweep of the crowd. Kate winces, her mouth sour.

They sit through the promotional film from the Capitol, and Annie's too short to see over the heads of everyone around them but it doesn't matter because the images aren't important. She'll have the words memorized long before she's old enough to understand. For her part Kate lets the voiceover grip her; imagines the terror of the Dark Days, the chaos that must have followed after. No one could be said to love the Games, really, not even in District Two, but at least here they're civilized. At least no child goes in unwilling and unprepared.

As a girl Kate never thought about what it would mean to the parents who raised those select children - why would she? It was always someone else, in a district this size. Everyone knew a kid or two who went to the Centre, but no one ever remembered the volunteers. Now she sees them in a different light; she thinks of their terrified parents, the mothers who prayed that their children could just be normal, be like the others. If she blames the Centre for twisting her daughter and those like her into the worst parts of themselves, at least they take those children away and hide them before it gets too bad. At least normal children get to live because of them.

They call the boys first. The one who steps up is tall and lightly-muscled and pretty, smaller than the usual Two quarry-boys, likely the son of Peacekeepers. They always look like that, lean and proud and confident, and the rage sits further beneath the surface with them. The quarry boys grew up with nothing and they look it, like every scrap of respect is one they earned themselves, but this boy smiles out at her through the screen with the eyes of someone who's never had to fight unless he wanted to.

Kate doesn't like him, but that doesn't matter. The sponsors likely will.

Next up, the girls, and the one whose name is drawn has ringlets pulled back into pigtails. Her eyes go wide and her mouth drops and she's thirteen, maybe, not much older, and from a merchant family, judging by the cut of her clothes. Kate brushes a hand down her own dress - Jake owns not just a store but a chain of stores, and one day maybe she'll figure out how she got so lucky - and watches the screen as the escort strikes a pose and calls for volunteers.

The voice that answers, booming through the speakers, is half an octave lower than the usual fare. Twos aren't built bouncing and giggling like the Ones, but they don't usually sound like that, either. The camera swoops down over the heads of the crowd, scanning, and there, finally, the crowd peels back, making room for a girl who's taller and broader than the boy onstage. She wears her hair cropped short and her biceps glisten in the light, her face set in a mask of excitement and impatience.

Something whispers in Kate's ear, and the shiver runs through her again. Annie whispers, "I want to see!" and Jake lifts her up onto his shoulders. Annie balks, her hands gripping the sides of Jake's face. "But she's not pretty at all!" Annie protests in a child's outraged tone, and the parents around them chuckle without thinking. A Peacekeeper takes a step forward - Jake hushes Annie and sets her back on the ground - and Kate keeps her eyes fixed on the screen, at the girl who glares out at them and dares them to judge her.

It's not her daughter - this one's name is Lyme, what kind of person gives a name like that to a little baby girl, where did they expect she'd wind up - but it could have been. Kate can't repress another shudder no matter how tightly Jake pulls her against his side. The girl stands stone-faced as the escort pokes at her biceps and coos over the muscles as if she were a boy, and it could have been Kate's daughter up there. Kate swallows a wave of nausea.

The tributes link hands and bare their teeth at the crowd.

* * *

Hank stands alone near the back of the crowd, arms folded across his chest. He probably could've gotten away with skipping the Reaping, since they only scan the kids and his is long gone out of his control, but some things just aren't worth the risk. No matter how much it stung those first few years, showing up at the square without his wife, for everyone to look and whisper and giggle to themselves that his Katie finally did a runner.

The first two years after she left, Hank nearly busted at least three heads right there in the square - would've, too, except for how it would've brought the Peacekeepers down on his head. After that it got better, new gossip and new people to roast over the fire, and Hank had got his business back up and running after his hiccup so it didn't matter anymore.

After that he kept going just because it's his patriotic duty. Hank loves his district, regardless of whatever the people in the Capitol do in their big fancy houses.

He's never seen a hint of Kate since she ran off on him. It's good for her because Hank doesn't know what he'd do, and good for him because without the privacy of his own home to do it in he'd probably get himself caught. Not that he would do anything now, there's no point, the anger is long gone and the bitterness left behind mostly makes him tired, but there was a time when the betrayal and the liquor made him mad and stupid. Chances are if he had seen her he would've done something that mixed both of those things together.

Now it's scabbed over and doesn't bother him much unless he thinks about it. Just, sometimes Hank gets curious where she went and what she did with herself, before he shunts that train off the rails. You don't carve a stone by banging away at the same spot with a hammer, and the more Hank thinks about Kate leaving the more it chips away at him that it's his fault she did it. Nobody needs that.

Regrets are for other people, and Hank has managed to put a lot of those away by the time his daughter marches up to the stage for the 55th Reaping.

It's a good thing he didn't skip after all, because if Hank were drinking at home he probably would've choked to death on his beer. She doesn't use her proper name, obviously - she gives that dumb nickname she made up for herself because she got too good for the one her parents gave her - but Hank knows his Madeline. He knows her even with five years and fifty extra pounds between the one onstage and the one who last told him to fuck himself.

He'd known, in the back of his head, that it would be her. The big envelopes of vouchers and tickets and the discretionary check have come like clockwork every month since the Centre took her full time, and those stop coming when a trainee gets cut. Hank doesn't keep a count or anything, but the payout goes up every year as the trainees get older and more valuable. That makes it hard to ignore.

She's big and tall and strong, and Snow on a mountaintop, but she looks like him. Madeline had never been a pretty girl no matter how much Kate insisted - Hank never cared too much one way or another, but happy wife makes happy life so he'd done his best to support her there - but she'd been young. Hard to see any family resemblance in a kid who scowled all the time and kept a hat jammed down over her face whenever possible.

Now, though, as Hank looks up at her image on the screen, it's his eyes in her face, his jaw that's set and raised in a proud cock of the head. His shoulders that help her stand out from the crowd of prettier girls standing in the square. It's a slap in the face and a kick to the kidneys all at once. Hank reaches out to steady himself except there's nothing there, and so he sways for a second before finding his footing.

She looks - well, she looks like a killer, no doubt about that, she looks like she could rip the boy standing next to her right in half and not even break a sweat, then pick her teeth with the Capitol escort afterward. Hank might have hated the way she went and made a boy of herself, how sad she made his Kate because she refused to be the daughter his wife always wanted, but he has to admit she's working it now. She's strong and hale and fierce and terrifying. Her gaze finds the camera and cuts a hole right through it so that Hank almost looks around to make sure she's not there staring at him in person.

She looks like she could win the Hunger Games. Hank never gave it much thought before, when it was Madeline sassing him to his face, Madeline stealing his money and refusing to do her share of the housework, Madeline making Kate cry. But now it's different, now Madeline is gone and it's Lyme or whatever she's called herself. Now it's not just a little girl playing tough. Now it's a girl who looks like she could walk into the Arena and come back out the other side, covered in blood and glory just like the Capitol propos make it sound.

Hank may have signed away his parental rights, but he likes the idea of having a Victor in the family. Even if she would never acknowledge him, even if he'd never be on television giving interviews, it would be nice to know. Hank wasn't the best father - he should've figured out a way to keep her on track without hitting her, but damned if she didn't find all the ways to piss him off so he had no choice - but having his girl turn out a Victor means he didn't do everything wrong.

If nothing else, she has him to thank for making her tough. Even if she hates him, she'd have to admit that.

A few years back, Two's last male Victor - big boy, name of Brutus, from down in the quarries where none of them know how to read - had his mother up on the screen giving interviews with the Capitol, a big change for Twos. For a second Hank imagines it, but he'd have no idea what to say and she sure as the Reaping wouldn't want his help, so he lets that one pass on by.

If she doesn't make it out, if she comes home in a box instead of with a crown, the Centre will send Hank his stipend for another five years in compensation for his loss. It's one hell of a gesture, given that he hasn't seen her for five years, but it's nice that they respect the role parents have in raising their kids to be someone the Centre could use. If she wins, Hank won't get another cent. After that mess a while back with that girl's mother putting herself on every screen demanding to be allowed into the Village, they'll likely send him a truck full of lawyers if he even sets foot outside of town.

Hank looks at her image on the screen, roaring out at the crowd looking twice the man as the boy beside her. The cameras haven't found him and nobody around him is looking, which means nobody knows. It's his secret, his alone. Maybe after, if she wins, he can mention it to the boys down at the bar - they'll never believe him, but that's okay.

The ceremony ends, and the tributes turn and walk into the Justice Building. Hank could maybe catch the next train north and make it there in time to see her before she goes, if he hurries, but instead he hangs back and watches the crowd disperse instead. No point in that. He has nothing to say to her, and anything she'd have for him is not something he wants to hear.

He can imagine it well enough, anyway. Madeline never bothered to spare anyone's feelings, and the weird Centre-persona she invented for herself even less so. He can see it now, her standing there with a few inches and twenty pounds on him, glaring fit to start a fire. He can hear her voice, too, deep and rough and nothing ladylike about it, asking him whether he's hoping for her to die so he can get his five-year payout.

Hank isn't stupid. No doubt that's what she thinks he wants, but jokes on her because it's not true.

Hank found it hard to love Madeline when she was small, and there's nothing left for this stranger on the stage, but he wants her to win it anyway. Why not? Better her than that sissy of a boy next to her, better either one of them than anyone from any of the other, lesser districts. Even if she'd likely tear his head off as say hello if she saw him now, it would be nice for something Hank had a hand in to make good. And no matter what she thinks, he would never wish death on her. He always wanted the best for her, back in the day; it's what she never understood then. Five years of learning how to be a murderer sure wouldn't change that.

He stays until the screens shut off, then turns and kicks a rock all the way back to catch the train for home.

* * *

Amanda Sullivan lost her sister to the Games when she was fourteen years old, and she's never forgotten. It's a badge of honour that Amanda will carry with her until she's dead in the ground, even if Sloane shed her surname when she entered Residential and never mentioned Amanda by name once in all her camera-time.

The recruiters came to the children's home when Amanda was just a baby. She doesn't remember but Sloane told her, when she was old enough to understand, that there was a reason the caretakers didn't hit them when they sometimes smacked the other kids. The Centre paid the orphanage a stipend to look after Sloane, and by extension Amanda, to keep them safe and healthy. The caretakers were afraid that if Sloane wasn't happy then the money would stop. It made sense to Amanda; why should the caretakers deserve to get anything from Sloane's training if half the marks on her didn't come from the Program kids at all?

The fear of the Centre kept the caretakers' hands to themselves, even after Sloane went into Residential, because the money kept coming until Sloane graduated. Amanda will never, ever repay that debt.

Sloane did, the only way she could: she went into the Arena as a tribute for District Two and didn't make it home a Victor. While Amanda still aches at the thought of losing her, she's never been prouder of anyone.

Sloane fought and died for her sister and her district. In recognition, the Centre gave Amanda - as her only living family - the condolence payout and a small apartment near her school for the next five years. They even helped her find a job once she hit the legal age.

People - stupid people, short-sighted people - call the Centre a death trap under their breaths, but they don't understand. They don't see what it does for children who have no way out, children who are desperate and angry and helpless. How it takes them and heals them and makes them strong, gives them confidence and helps them make something of themselves.

Amanda became a teacher with the reference letter the Centre gave her. She's spent her life looking out for those children, the ones with no one to look out for them. She dedicated her all to guiding them to the place that will turn their lives around.

She never sees most of them again, the way it should be - the Centre takes them at thirteen and becomes their family - but a few have found her after. They're Peacekeepers, or doctors, or politicians, and they tell her they never would've found their way to where they are now if she hadn't helped them find the Centre. A lot of Centre washouts go right back to the lives they left regardless of what the recruiting pamphlets say - they end up quarriers or factory workers like the rest of the blue-collar population - but not the ones Amanda finds. She has a knack for the special, the ones deserving of the best placements available. It keeps Amanda going, keeps the memory of Sloane alive, as the years pass and one decade turns into two.

There was one girl, one girl who sticks in Amanda's memory like a splinter, a girl with the worst, most terrible parents imaginable. A girl with a fire in her eyes so bright that not even daily beatings could quench it, a girl with brilliance and potential and a soul that ripped Amanda's out. Amanda thinks more about her than most. She'll pass her final Reaping soon - this year, or maybe next, Amanda lost count - and like all the others the Centre will find her a place where she's meant to be.

The girl this year, Lyme, standing in for a shivering, terrified thirteen-year-old with her hair in pigtails, reminds Amanda a little of Madeline. She could be Madeline, almost, but for the size of her and the different name. She looks out at the crowd with a cool arrogance that's much calmer than Madeline's barely-restrained fury, but they're alike enough for the comparison. Amanda thinks back to that girl with a fondness that the years have not managed to temper. Wherever she goes, Madeline will be brilliant, and like her, this girl - whether she wins or loses - will give the Capitol a fine show and represent District Two in a way that will make them all proud. Amanda has a sense of these things.

None of the children Amanda's helped have ever made it to the Reaping, but that's the way it should be. She gave her sister freely and without regrets; the boys and girls she's saved since then are meant to mend the missing pieces in Amanda's life, not be further sacrifices. The Centre takes in many and only asks for the ultimate price from a precious few; the ones Amanda finds are the ones meant for something other than the Games.

"I like this one," says Dan in a low voice as the escort drones on and Lyme ignores the prattle with a Career's practiced disregard. "We should see if we can't send her something later, pitch in for some water or a tinderbox, maybe."

"Yes, let's," Amanda says, leaning her head against his shoulder. "I've got a good feeling about her."


End file.
